0000000000849614
AUTHOR
Johanna Hendrika Reudler Talsma
The roles of foraging environment, host species, and host diet for a generalist pupal parasitoid
Even for parasitoids with a wide host range, not all host species are equally suitable, and host qualityoften depends on the plant the host feeds on. We compared oviposition choice and offspring perfor-mance of a generalist pupal parasitoid,Pteromalus apum(Retzius) (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae), ontwo congeneric hosts reared on two plant species under field and laboratory conditions. The plantscontain defensive iridoid glycosides that are sequestered by the hosts. Sequestration at the pupal stagediffered little between host species and, although the concentrations of iridoid glycosides in the twoplant species differ, there was no effect of diet on the sequestration by host pupae. The rate of …
Costs and benefits of plant allelochemicals in herbivore diet in a multi enemy world
Sequestration of plant defensive chemicals by herbivorous insects is a way of defending themselves against their natural enemies. Such herbivores have repeatedly evolved bright colours to advertise their unpalatability to predators, i.e. they are aposematic. This often comes with a cost. In this study, we examined the costs and benefits of sequestration of iridoid glycosides (IGs) by the generalist aposematic herbivore, the wood tiger moth, Parasemia plantaginis. We also asked whether the defence against one enemy (a predator) is also effective against another (a parasitoid). We found that the larvae excrete most of the IGs and only small amounts are found in the larvae. Nevertheless, the a…